https://doi.org/10.1080/07011784.2025.2559600

The world is entering an era of immense water-related threats, from floods, droughts, and other extreme events to degradation of water quality and severe pressure on aquatic ecosystems, increasing demand for freshwater, and major changes in hydrological regime and water availability. There is a need for new science, new modelling tools and monitoring systems, and more effective mechanisms to translate new scientific knowledge into societal action. This represents a grand challenge for water science in Canada and globally: ‘How can we best prepare for and manage water futures in the face of dramatically increasing risks?’ The Global Water Futures (GWF) programme was conceived in 2015 to address this grand challenge; funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund and bringing together a transdisciplinary team of partners from 18 Canadian universities working with over 500 other partner institutions and organisations, GWF was the largest programme of its kind in Canada, and to our knowledge the largest in the world. As the programme ended in August 2025 this paper looks back at how GWF was conceived and developed, it’s management and operation, how it was structured to pursue an ambitious science agenda and how this was carried out, Indigenous engagement and knowledge exchange within GWF, changes in direction and approach as GWF evolved and circumstances arose, and lessons learned upon reflection. This was a vast effort by a large group of people and many partners and much of what was done was new and unique. By documenting our experience, this paper aims to serve as a useful guide for large science programmes.

https://doi.org/10.1080/07011784.2025.2559600